Temperance by Theodore L. Cuyler

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 3, 1881

Temperance.

By Theodore L. Cuyler

JOSEPH COOK’S PULPIT, AND TEMPERANCE.

Although the so-called temperance lecture of the eminent Dr. Crosby has already been noticed at some length in this department, we feel sure that all will be interested in what Theodore L. Cuyler, D. D., says about it in the Independent, as follows:—

Joseph Cook has built a Monday morning pulpit in Boston, which is visible over the whole continent and across the sea. In that pulpit he has struck some sturdy and unanswerable blows in favor of prohibitory legislation against tippling-houses and in favor of the principles and practice of total abstinence from all intoxicants. During his absence in Europe, his lecture committee have admitted to his pulpit my genial and eloquent friend, Chancellor Crosby, who has opened his broadsides against nearly every position which Mr. Cook has taken upon the subject of temperance. If that pulpit is to become, like certain clubs in Boston, the theatre of “free discussion,” then I submit that they might as well invite Professor Huxley to assail Mr. Cook’s position on evolution, or Colonel Ingersoll to assail his views on the inspiration of the word and the doctrine of atonement.

One of the most remarkable things about Dr. Crosby’s discourse is its title. He calls it a “Calm View of the Temperance Question,” and then dashes into a heated tirade against the “wild radicalism of teetotalers,” whom he denounces as fanatics, as unmanly, as twisters of Scripture, as radical agitators, and as infatuated defenders of a system that is utterly impracticable and is “increasing the drunkenness in the land!” If my friend utters all this when he is calm, what might we expect from him if he were excited? When I reached the following sentence in his discourse, I was inclined to name it a “comical view of temperance,” for I could not refrain from the Christian liberty of a hearty laugh. He asserts that the total abstinence system is contrary to revealed religion, and harmful to the interests of the country, and exclaims:—

“I charge upon this system the growth of drunkenness in our land and the general demoralization among religious communities; and I call upon all sound-minded, thinking men to stop the enormities of this false system.” *

The Chancellor’s foremost argument against our total abstinence movement is that it has proved impracticable and is a failure. If he will allow me to use his own frankness, I will say that he is the very last man who ought to utter that taunt. The whole nation knows that for several years he has intrepidly led a movement in the city of New York to enforce a weak excise law, which is hopelessly vitiated by a clause that permits endless dram-selling under the name of hotel-keeping. So strong was Dr. Crosby’s faith in this rickety law that he once rashly affirmed that under it he would clear New York of grog-shops in six months! We older workers in the reform, while we honored his zeal and courage, felt assured of his inevitable failure; not from his fault, but the fault of his “system.” During the very time that his Society were doing their utmost, I looked into the doorway of a full-rigged dram-shop which was driving its accursed traffic within a stone’s throw of Dr. Crosby’s residence. That death-dealing establishment (the nursery of “moderate drinkers”) and its six or seven thousand partners were no more affected by Dr. Crosby’s well-meant efforts than the abutments of the East River Bridge would be by the stroke of a mallet. We teetotalers do know, from solid statistics, that hundreds of thousands have been reached, and benefited, and protected, and blessed by the total abstinence pledge. I can testify to the immense service which it rendered to me and to others, when I was a student in college.

He pronounces the total abstinence pledge a “straight jacket” and a pernicious instrument for debauching the conscience; but in another part of his discourse he distinctly says: “I do not oppose the principle of total abstinence for the individual. It is every man’s duty to abstain if his own conscience commands it.” Now, if my conscience commands me to let intoxicants alone, then, in the name of common sense, where is the harm of my recording my conscientious purpose on a pledge? And, if we teetotalers, by our “propaganda,” can so enlighten the consciences of young men that they shall agree to let alcoholics alone, where is the harm of their banding together into a temperance society, with its wholesome pledge? Does Dr. Crosby consider a pledge in wedlock to “love each other” or a pledge of fidelity to Christ in church-membership a “straight jacket?” Yet in both these cases conscience as well as judgment, leads to the employment of a binding instrument. The fact is that Dr. Crosby yields about all that the most thoughtful and wise abstainers claim in this last quoted passage. He admits that total abstinence is a good thing for the individual, and so well do I know him that I am sure he would rejoice to see everybody avoiding intoxicants. Now, all that we members of the temperance “propaganda” are aiming at is to persuade everybody to do just this very good thing.

Probably we shall have harder work to persuade some people to adopt this wise course after they have read some of the extraordinary declarations in Dr. Crosby’s Boston discourse. One of these declarations is that it is “atrocious dogma to assume that moderate drinking leads to drunkenness.” I do not know of a more dangerous bait that could be nailed up over the bar of a fashionable saloon than this most ill-considered sentence. No sane man ever asserted that every moderate drinker becomes a drunkard; but just as long as “wine is a mocker” and just as long as moderate drinking is the door of entrance to all the drunkenness that has peopled hell, just so long will we teetotalers stand outside of that door, and, in the name of brotherly love, will warn every man, woman, and child against entering it.

The space accorded to a brief article forbids even a reference to many of the remarkable declarations in this frank, bold discourse. Some of them are remarkably pithy and sensible, and we “fanatics” may profit by them. Some of them will afford quite too ready and convenient pleas for tampering with the bottle and for jeering at that reform which God has so signally blessed. I leave Brother Crosby to the owner of that lofty Boston pulpit. The eccentric John Randolph was accustomed to ride on horse-back to the Capitol; and, on reaching his desk in the House, he often swept his rawhide riding-whip across the desk, and sent all the bills which the page had laid there flying over the floor. When Joseph Cook returns from Europe, he may find some singular documents lying on his pulpit, and, if he uses the rawhide of his logic on this “View of the Temperance Question,” perhaps it will not continue to feel so “calm.”